Hi, it's BTS, and you're watching Disney Channel

The K-pop supergroup will reportedly produce three new projects for the The Walt Disney Company

Hi, it's BTS, and you're watching Disney Channel
BTS Photo: Kevin Winter

The Walt Disney Company (or, more likely, the very-online young daughter of a high-powered Disney executive) officially has BTS fever. The K-pop supergroup’s label Hybe is currently working on three upcoming projects with the House Of Mouse, per The Hollywood Reporter.

The slate of new projects includes BTS: Permission to Dance on Stage – LA, a 4K concert film chronicling the group’s November 2021 performance at Los Angeles’ Sofi Stadium. The show marked BTS’ first real-life encounter with fans since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. The band will further see their meteoric global rise chronicled in more depth in a planned docuseries called BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star, set to be released on Disney’s streaming services in 2023.

However, the content also capitalizes on the group’s dedicated fandom, who will happily tune in to watch the band eat lunch together for an hour as long as it means existing in their favorite BTS boy’s aura. In The Soup: Friendcation is an original travel reality show that features V of BTS as well as a host of other Korean stars who’ve found success stateside, like Itaewon Class’ Seo-jun Park, Parasite’s Woo-shik Choi, Hyung-sik Park and Peakboy. The series will reportedly follow the five friends as they embark on a surprise vacation, capturing them offscreen, offstage, and in “real” life.

“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Hybe to showcase their original content created with powerful artist IP on our global streaming services including Disney+,” said Jessica Kam-Engle, Disney’s APAC head of content, per THR. “This collaboration represents our creative ambition—to work with iconic content creators and top stars in Asia-Pacific so their talent can be enjoyed by mainstream audiences in multiple ways. We believe these new titles will captivate consumers worldwide and look forward to introducing more music content on our service.” Park Ji-won, the CEO of Hybe, also emphasized that the three projects will mark “the start of a long-term collaboration.”

The news of the new partnership comes just a few weeks after BTS seemed to announce during their annual band-iversary luncheon that they were taking a “hiatus” to focus on individual projects. After the internet went wild with the news (and Hybe’s stocks plummeted), the company quickly stepped in to unequivocally assure fans BTS is very much still together. This new Disney slate certainly looks like proof of that—but the recent unfettered commentary from the band certainly leaves questions existing.

 
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